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New residential space redefining working from home
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Developer Sam Levin doesn’t have far to go for lunch. Not only can he eat at home, but the commute from his office to his kitchen takes about 27 seconds.
Levin and his family live in a town house built above commercial space on Daniel Island, where the mixed-use housing trend is rapidly gaining a foothold in the island’s downtown area.
Levin’s company primarily develops office space, but he decided to experiment with the mixed-use concept about three years ago when he built two town houses above commercial units on Seven Farms Drive. He and his family have lived in one of them for 2 1/2 years.
The Levin Co. is now located in an office on the ground floor of Levin’s building. Levin reaches his third-floor home via a double-sided elevator.
The four-bedroom town house has 3,600 square feet of space including the office, four full baths and two half-baths, two fireplaces, a rooftop terrace, a ground-floor courtyard and a climate-controlled garage.
“A happy day was selling the lawnmower,” Levin said.
He has since built eight residential-over-commercial units across the street at Seven Farms Square in the heart of Daniel Island’s business district.
“All eight sold to investors in just one day,” he said.
The units are coming back on the market soon but haven’t yet been listed with Daniel Island Real Estate. The condos are part of an 80,000-square-foot project that includes 65,000 square feet of office or retail space. The commercial space is almost fully leased and includes offices for American Express Financial Advisors, Ryland Homes and Coastal Eye Care.
Julie Dombrowski, communications director for The Daniel Island Co., said residential/commercial projects are going up all over the island.
“From a land perspective, it’s a really efficient use of land,” Dombrowski said.
The first one-bedroom residences above commercial space on the island sold in fall 2004 for around $110,000—a remarkably low price compared with single-family homes on the island, which now start in the mid-400,000s.
“As a result, the day we released these we had six times the contracts than the number of units,” Dombrowski said.
The second town house Levin built alongside his own home is a 4,000-square-foot, five-bedroom listed at $1.6 million.
“This will probably be a benchmark by which other similar live/work units on Daniel Island are sold,” Dombrowski said.
Buyers are mostly people who want to live on Daniel Island and want access to the amenities, but don’t necessarily want a house.
Housing industry experts say young people without children are the biggest fans of residential-over-commercial housing, but Sam and Lisa Levin and their two teenage sons seem happily ensconced in their upper-level dwelling. Keeping company with the family of four is a rag doll cat named Blueberry, and Ruby, a standard poodle.
“It’s no different from the way a lot of our grandparents grew up,” Levin said. “For us, this is trying to maintain a family unit while running a business.”
The Levins can eat in restaurants, shop for groceries or walk to a dentist’s office from their home on Daniel Island’s main thoroughfare. The fire station is just across the street, churches are down the block and Daniel Island School is under construction.
“What makes a city vibrant and safe and convenient is to have residential mixed with commercial,” Levin said.
The family previously lived in Mount Pleasant’s Old Village. Even though Levin’s office was only a mile away, commuting still took away some of the family’s time together.
Now, the couples’ teenage sons have computers in their father’s office and can do their homework there. They pass through the office when they’re leaving and Levin can ask them where they’re going and when they’ll be back.
“I wouldn’t have known that if I were in an office somewhere else,” Levin said.
Lisa Levin also gets to see more of her husband.
“Even if he doesn’t have a lot of time, he can just run upstairs and we can grab a quick sandwich together,” she said. “Sometimes if he’s got to go out to dinner with a client, he can come upstairs and spend a little time with the boys and me and then go out to dinner. I see a lot more of him now, and it’s nice.”
Lisa also likes walking to Laura Albert’s, a neighborhood restaurant, for lunch.
“Sometimes I go with Sam or sometimes I meet a friend, but I’m comfortable enough that sometimes I just go by myself,” she said.
Sam Levin said he thinks residential/commercial housing will grow stronger in the Charleston area in the future because it offers quality-of-life amenities.
On the commercial side, clients visiting his office/home find little difference from a conventional office space.
“They might have to deal with a poodle in the office,” Levin said, “but that’s life.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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